It's been a bleak week in the world of MasterChef, and I'm not even talking about how I missed blogging while on vacation. Chicago Magazine released an in-depth and heartwrenching piece on the mental health struggles and eventual suicide of Josh Marks, the lovable runner-up from Season Two, a few days ago. (I'd link to it here but every time I try to open it, it crashes my laptop. So here's an analysis of the piece by Color Lines. They include a link to the original story, and if you have a computer that's more trustworthy than mine - and I know you do - click away.)
Monday's episode of MasterChef was not nearly as serious as the new revelations about Marks, but as far as reality cooking shows hosted by Gordon Ramsay, it was a kind of depressing one, thanks to the immediate elimination of someone for making a stupid mistake. Did Tyler knowingly take one of Jaimee's panna cottas out of the freezer? It does seem strange that he put four of his own on the bottom shelf and only took one off the top shelf later, but who knows what people are thinking when they're under stress? Were the judges right in eliminating him without further notice? I see where they're coming from - they certainly can't taste a dish that wasn't cooked by him, which therefore means he didn't complete the challenge. Still, my heart went to him.
But here I am getting too ahead of myself and all weepy on a Monday night. The remaining 16 contestants arrived for the Mystery Box Challenge filled with hopes and dreams. Tyler the country boy would be happy if the box revealed some form of roadkill; Christine was itching to work with some bone marrow because that's not random at all. Nobody yearned for SPAM, and yet that's what they got, in the form of 52 unlabeled aluminum cans of food. It's like getting a Christmas stocking full of individually wrapped gifts, except each gift is heavily processed and has been sitting in its own juices for 5 years.
And it really is like Christmas for the contestants who grew up on canned food, like Big Willie and Elizabeth. Ahran, in typical Ahran fashion, scoffs at the cans. "We only use fresh ingredients at home," the Regina George wannabe sneers. Jaimee doesn't turn away from the cans, but she does waste 20 minutes opening each of them and then staring at them until the SPAM starts to saute itself.
The top three wind up filling out a Papa Bear, Baby Bear and Goldilocks of ingredient usage. On one end of the spectrum is Victoria, a so-far-unseen entity who favors denim shirts buttoned right up to the top. Victoria uses a whopping eight cans of food to create a potted meat fritter with an artichoke and beet salad.
Conversely, Ahran opened one can of fruit cocktail and quit, using the contents as filler in a rolled sponge cake made with stock ingredients. Joe gushed about Ahran's strategy of thinking outside the box and taking full advantage of the stock ingredients; he just couldn't stop talking about how smart she was. I, however, am going to call shenanigans on that. I don't know if Joe took Ahran in the judges' pool at the start of the season, but I think her dish lacked any creativity whatsoever. She found one thing that didn't scare her and then used bland, boring, safe ingredients to go around it. Mixing five different types of processed meat together and deep frying it to make a fritter and murder all of us by heart disease like Victoria takes talent and a strategy; making a sponge cake and shoving one thing in the middle of it takes the ability to make a sponge cake.
All of this is moot since Goldilocks came in the form of Elizabeth and her pretty pink borscht. Food quality aside, Elizabeth deserved to win for her facial expressions while the judges tried her food. Eyes wide while they put the bit in their mouth, moving her whole body as she tries to read whether they liked it from their reactions, her face a combination of relief and horror when they give her the thumbs up. I want Elizabeth to be my personal audience, following me around and reacting to my stories so they seem even more funny/amazing.
With the win, Elizabeth retreated to the pantry, where she was greeted by last year's MasterChef winner Luca and Junior MasterChef winner Alexander. After learning she was exempt from the challenge, she had to assign half of the remaining contestants to one of the two signature dishes of the former champions: Luca's pancetta-wrapped veal and Alexander's passion fruit panna cotta.
We only wind up seeing a few of the finished products. The judges rave over Courtney's veal, and lecture Big Willie on his insistence on cooking his veal twice and drying it out. Christian's panna cotta was bad, a fact he was more than willing to admit himself before the judges could say a word. Cutter's panna cotta was surprisingly good.
Then we got to Jaimee. During the cooking process, Jaimee put three panna cotta's into the freezer to cool, but when she went to retrieve them, only two remained. One of the two immediately sank into the bowl and the other splattered like pudding when she put it on the dish. She was reprimanded for the consistency, although it still tasted good.
Up next was Tyler, whose pudding-like panna cotta looked awfully familiar. Gordon stopped him before anyone tasted it, went to the freezer and found the four panna cottas Tyler had put there. He was the mysterious panna cotta thief. The judges believed him when he said it was a mistake, but the rules state that contestants must plate their own dishes to be judged. Tyler didn't plate his own dish; therefore, he cannot be judged and cannot finish the challenge.
Tyler, for his part, was classy about the whole thing, thanking the judges and apologizing to Jaimee (even giving her a sweet compliment on how he at least knows his plate would have tasted great).
After that, we didn't see anyone else's dishes, but I guess it didn't matter because Courtney won. Her prize? To be dubbed "little miss tippy toes" by Gordon Ramsay, because of course.
Dish I'd Most Like to Try: While Victoria's meat fritters intrigue me, I'd go with Alexander's panna cotta.
Dish I Made Myself: An egg sandwich with American cheese (I'm sure a staple in Ahran's house) and salsa. Not quite Big Willie's eggs benedict, but about as fulfilling a meal as they come.
No comments:
Post a Comment